For some reason, that small thought soothed him and it was with a lift to his step that he dressed and went to breakfast.

Harriet pushed her hat off her head and wiped her brow. These were the last of them. Beginning tomorrow, they would start the shearing.

She leaned against the fence, her neck and back aching. Thank goodness for Max. He herded the sheep almost effortlessly, crisscrossing back and forth, nipping at a heel here, a rump there. The sheep, though nervous around him, seemed to understand he meant no harm and they jostled along in the general direction he provided.

“Are we done?”

Harriet glanced up at the captain. He leaned against the fence, his shirt undone at the neck, his sleeves rolled up. A wide-brimmed straw hat was settled on his black hair, shading his eyes from the sun. He’d not worn a hat the first day, and the bridge of his nose and the tips of his ears were a pleasant shade of pink.

After seeing him glowing red at the end of the first day, Harriet had demanded that Stephen provide him one of his straw hats. The hat, old and frayed, wasn’t one of Stephen’s better ones, but on the captain, it seemed different somehow. Bolder. More…noble or something.

The captain glanced down at her at that moment, his brows lifting. “What?”

She looked away, irritated he’d caught her staring at him. “Nothing. I was just seeing if your sunburn was better.”

“Oh I hardly feel it at all. Of course, that could be because the rest of me is so pained that I barely notice the sunburn, but…” He shrugged.

Her lips twitched. “You know, I’m surprised you are sore at all. It’s almost as if you’d never done a day’s labor in your life. A strange thought, that. You’d think a sailor would be more used to hard work.”

Chase glanced down at the wretch. She was teasing him, he was sure of it. Always dancing on the line of the fantasy she’d forced on him, while waiting for him to reveal himself.

Well, he didn’t have to reveal a thing. And while it behooved him to pretend to be “Captain John,” he didn’t have to be nice about it. He owed this little slip of impudence a lesson or two. A lesson about toying with the minds of men far greater than she.

He was a St. John, dammit. Perhaps the least of the St. Johns, but a St. John nonetheless. He turned, leaning his back against the fence so that he could more fully face her. “Strange that you should mention the sea. I wonder that I do not have any memory of that. Not even a little.”

“No? I heard you tell Miss Stanhope all sorts of sea tales just the other day.”

“I stole them out of a book from your library.”

She appeared much struck. “Did you?”

“Tales of a Foreign Born Sailor.”

“I’m impressed that you’ve gone to such lengths.”